Absent an urban campus like Pitt, college games in NFL stadiums are dumb. College gameday on campus is the greatest environment in sports.
Northwestern University is rebuilding its own stadium in Evanston, even though the campus is less than 15 miles from Soldier Field in Chicago.
Mm, seems the U.S. model is being transplanted to the U K., and British taxpayers already subsidize sports teams.
And now:
The Indiana House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee passed a bill establishing a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority to finance, construct and lease a stadium by a 24-0 margin. The Bears are looking at a tract of land near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Ind.
“The passage of SB 27 would mark the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date,” the team said in a statement. “We are committed to finishing the remaining site-specific necessary due diligence to support our vision to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana.”
Reposting the below from my comment in the NFL Off-Season thread in The Game Room. Today is not a good look for the Bears.
Sounds like the Bears are trying to play IL against IN. See which one offers the best deal.
Oh, they absolutely are, much as they were trying to play Chicago off of Arlington Heights in 2024.
It’s the apparent lying to both states now, clearly in the name of “dealmaking,” that is making the Bears look particularly bad, IMO. They lied to Illinois about why they didn’t want to have a meeting on the legislation today, and (maybe) lied to Indiana about how committed they are to the Hammond stadium.
Playing with Google Maps, the proposed location in Indiana is 14 miles (as the crow flies) from Soldier Field or about twenty miles by road.
Field of Schemes has, of course, been following this one…
The Indiana legislature’s amended bill for a Chicago Bears stadium project is finally up, and we can start to get a slightly better sense of what it would entail in terms of public costs. Tax expenditures would include: a city of Hammond admissions tax, Lake County and Porter County food and beverage tax surcharges, a Hammond food and beverage tax surcharge, a Lake County hotel tax surcharge, what looks like local income and sales taxes from a stadium district, and state sales taxes from a stadium district. The stadium authority would also own the stadium and lease it to the Bears (terms very much TBD), so it would presumably be exempt from property taxes.
and now add Iowa into the mix
How so? Posts like this are cryptic.
I’ve seen absolutely no news to suggest that the Bears are looking at moving to Iowa. If you have a legitimate link, please share.
No. The Bears are not interested in moving to Iowa–but some stupid state of Iowa legislators think there is a possibility:
Thank you – I’d not seen that story. I agree, this is just Iowa politicians trying to get some news headlines, or just being clueless.
Googling, the Chicago metro area has a population of over nine million while Des Moines, Iowa is only about 700,000. So roughly a tenth the size. Not really able to offer the same level of support.
That’s closer than Arlington Heights.
FWIW, the Green Bay metro area (~335,000) is about half the size of the Des Moines metro. The Packers, of course, are essentially “Wisconsin’s Team,” and draw support from the bigger cities/metros of Milwaukee and Madison.
However, the fact that there is an NFL team in a small city is an artifact of the league’s beginnings, the Packers being publicly-owned (with clauses that prevent someone from attempting to buy and move them), and the team being able to, for the last 60+ years, benefit from the NFL’s television contracts which divide TV revenue equally. A city the size of Green Bay (or even bigger) would never get a new/relocated NFL franchise today.
The major stadiums/stadia housing major-league teams in Montreal were all privately built. The Bell Centre (hockey, concerts, etc.) is privately owned by the Molson family - as is the minor league Centre Bell in nearby Laval. Saputo Stadium houses the MLS team - privately built/owned by the Saputo family. Percival Molson stadium houses the CFL team - built from a donation from Percival Molson, who died in WW1. It is owned by McGill University, but has had some publicly funded upgrades over the tears,
On the other hand - the Olympic Stadium (“Big Owe”) which houses no team at the moment, was built with public money.
Possibly the city gives them some tax breaks.
It appears that a lot of idiots in Indiana think they can score political points by giving their tax dollars to the Bears, thus making a point about how Indiana’s policies are more “business-friendly” than Indiana. If a bunch of MAGAt fools want to bankrupt their school systems in order to subsidize my football team, I’m actually completely OK with that.
I don’t see anything in the Indiana plan for the Bears that would be subsidizing a new stadium with property taxes or general funds.
Here you go: Not property taxes on local residents, but several other taxes which will affect Indiana residents: